APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110024-7
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FIGURE 30. Exploitation of the theater by the regime. Scene from a "progressive" play adapted from a Brazilian work depicting the misguided efforts of a youth gang "to correct imperialist conditions" by resorting to crime. The young people subsequently realize their error and join working class organizations.
sniping at the regime. One famous cabaret, the Peppermill in Leipzig, reportedly featured a number of unflattering comments about the East German system and its leader Walter Ulbricht in performances during the city's international fair in the fall of 1969. This may have been especially permitted at the time; however, to impress foreign visitors and convey the impression that no cultural restraints existed. Most cabarets confine their programs to criticism of Western policies, employing only an occasional mild rebuke about some shortcoming of East German society. Cabaret theater is practiced professionally in four locales—East Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, and Halle.
Despite a lightening of the regime's negative cultural policy, stagnation continues to pervade East German arts and letters. The Communist authorities cannot be expected to abandon their right to set guidelines in the cultural field; East German intellectuals, by tradition, submissive to authority, have not striven to protect their integrity and lack leadership around which to coalesce. The historical past, being less controversial than the present, continues to be a refuge into which East German creative artists can withdraw. Unable to create culturally edifying works which at the same time will satisfy the authorities, intellectuals frequently retreat to historical themes which will not lead them into difficulty. The classics—Beethoven and Brahms symphonies, Mozart and Strauss operas, Handel and Bach cantatas—are certified as edifying and are popular, and works of Goethe, Schiller and Lessing, or of such foreign masters as Shakespeare and Gorky, are frequently performed. The SED encourages performances of earlier masters, as the preservation of the German cultural tradition is a declared policy of the regime.
J. Public information media
All media of mass communications in East Germany are directly or indirectly controlled by the regime, which views them as a primary means of indoctrinating the population. At the same time popular access to uncontrolled or outside sources of information is sharply limited in order to maximize the impact of the regime's efforts. Although the East German constitution guarantees freedom of the press and ostensibly independent organizations are allowed to publish, all publications must be licensed by the Press Office of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, an adjunct of the SED Central Committee's Departments of Agitation and Propaganda. This office also exercises control through a form of prior censorship and allocation of newsprint. Radio and television are indirectly controlled by the Agitprop Department through two separate commissions of the State Broadcasting Committee. The publication of books and the production of movies are also state monopolies under the purview of the Ministry for Cultural Affairs.
1. The press
Of the 11 daily newspapers published in East Germany in 1972, 10 were published in East Berlin (Figure 31). The rest were published in various district capitals and other large cities. The average size of the
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PPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110024-7
